UK defends mother who illegally aborted baby at 32 weeks

British medical authorities and government officials are outraged that a mother of three who illegally killed her 32-week-old child in her womb has been sentenced to over two years in prison.

Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother of three, committed feticide in 2020 after lying about her pregnancy term to obtain abortion pills.

While abortion in the UK is generally legal up to 24 weeks, the procedures are performed in clinics or hospitals after ten. During the pandemic, the UK passed a law allowing women up to ten-weeks pregnant to obtain abortion pills in the mail and take them at home.

In May 2020, when Foster was 28 weeks pregnant, she arranged a call with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). Foster led the nurse to believe that she was seven weeks pregnant. The BPAS mailed her the abortion pills, which Foster ingested.

Soon afterward, Foster went into labor. Medical responders pronounced the baby dead at birth after several resuscitation attempts. A postmortem determined the baby was between 32 and 34 weeks.

Foster, who said she wanted an abortion because she wasn’t sure who the father was, originally pleaded not guilty to a charge of child destruction, and later pleaded guilty under the Offenses Against the Person Act. Justice Edward Pepperall sentenced Foster to 28 months in prison, though he said the maximum punishment is life imprisonment. He added that he would have sentenced her to even less time had she pled guilty earlier.

The sentence came despite entreaties from officials within the UK government and other medical bodies in April. They begged Justice Pepperall to be lenient and absolve Foster from serving any prison time, fearing that imprisonment would discourage other women from aborting their children.

According to the Daily Mail, National Health Service London Regional Director and Faculty of Public Health President Professor Kevin Fenton sent a letter to the judge asking for “leniency”. He was joined by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, the governmental body National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), and others.

“We plead to Your Honour to consider leniency in this case. . .we are fearful that if the case before you receives a custodial sentence it may signal to other women who access tele-medical abortion services, or who experience later gestation deliveries, that they risk imprisonment if they seek medical care,” the “medical experts” wrote in the letter.

Judge Pepperall slammed the letter as “inappropriate”, adding he “does not accept that imprisonment in this case is likely to deter women and girls from lawfully seeking abortion care within the 24-week limit.”

After Foster was sentenced to 28 months, BPAS Chief Executive Clare Murphy said she was “shocked and appalled” by the punishment.

Ironically, Women’s Equality Party Leader Mandu Reid slammed the decision because, among other things, it separated children from their mother.

“I am devastated for the woman at the centre of this case, and for her children, who have been forcibly separated from their mum. . .

“This conviction serves no one, not her, not her children, not the public interest. All it does is punish a woman for seeking healthcare in the middle of a pandemic and risk deterring women who want or need an abortion from seeking that care in future. No one deserves to be criminalised for seeking healthcare, which is a human right.”